Joe Lonsdale
Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC. On 8 shows, 172 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderhostexecutive@JTLonsdale ↗LinkedIn ↗joelonsdale.com ↗Wikipedia ↗YouTube ↗
He co-founded Palantir Technologies, as well as software platforms Addepar and OpenGov. Through his venture firm 8VC, he invests across defense technology, life sciences, and enterprise infrastructure.
8shows
172appearances
529statements
131resolved
71supported
25contradicted
54%fully supported
173said about them ↓ Everything Joe Lonsdale said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lonsdale: The Comanche were like a '10X Nazi death cult'
“I like doing a joke land acknowledgement that thank goodness that, you know, we took this place over from the Comanche Indians that were like a 10, 10 X Nazi death cult of murderers and rapists, and people don't realize that.”
Lonsdale: Claudine Gay targeted Roland Fryer over police violence research
“And of course, Clyde and Gay, who at the time wasn't even president yet, but she was like a big internal African-American woman activists at Harvard. She went after him and she found a former student who, and she got the former student from like 10 years ago t…”
Lonsdale: Government regulators target Elon Musk to punish public speech
“If they want to go to attack Elon to punish him for speaking up, they will, and they do.”
Lonsdale: UCLA Medical School Is Graduating Incompetent Doctors Due to Ideology
“So UCLA recently, we saw that school's really been taken over by ideologues, and they're graduating a lot of people who are not competent doctors. They're bringing the wrong people in.”
Lonsdale: Israel Will Keep Fighting and Completely Wipe Out Hamas
“The way it stands now is, is we're going to keep fighting. We're going to wipe out Hamas and hopefully we can work with others to have a government there. That's not, you know, does not allow terrorism.”
Lonsdale: Anti-Israel Hatred in Gaza Stems From School Indoctrination
“I think basically what creates a generation of civilians that hate Israel is you have the schools in that area have been run by people who teach people that Jews are pigs and Jews are wrong and our religion hates Jews.”
Lonsdale: Reform Jewish Synagogues Function as Arms of Democratic Party
“And there's a, the majority of Jews now are reformed Jews, and the reformed Jewish synagogues have been conquered. They're basically more arms of the Democratic Party on the left than they are places of worship.”
Lonsdale: Majority of Young Adults Dislike Jews for Their Success
“And now in 19 to 25 year olds, majority of them don't like Jews because we're successful.”
Lonsdale: Fauci effectively bribed researchers to reject lab-made virus theory
“As far as I could tell, people saw that this was a lab-made virus, they spoke out about it, Fauci gave them a call, they changed their mind in public, then they got a big grant. Like, it's very clear this guy was bribing, as far as I could tell, these research…”
Lonsdale: Brands get 10x better sales using fit models over obese models
“One of the funny things, which I probably shouldn't say, but I will, is that we have consumer stuff we do sometimes, and a lot of the consumer companies I see around are starting to put, like, very obese people as their models, and I asked our partners who kno…”
Lonsdale claims BLM movement ideas caused thousands of additional Black deaths
“There's a lot of truth and positive parts of the BLM movement the last couple years, but it's actually led to thousands more deaths in the black community because of the things that it was pushing. Because of the bad ideas.”
Lonsdale: China deliberately let COVID spread internationally to share economic harm
“China, China clearly Knew this and covered it up and made sure it spread internationally because otherwise it would have hurt them more than everyone else.”
Lonsdale: Male Leaders Do Not Need Same Paternity Leave as Women
“Men don't need to heal the same way women do. They don't always need as much time as women off. A great woman leader is just as important to get back to work, but she may need to heal. The man doesn't need to heal. He shouldn't be pretending he needs the same …”
Lonsdale: Silicon Valley cancel culture resembles 1970s Maoist struggle sessions
“What's really happened here is there's like five or 10% of people who are on one political extreme who've really hijacked the conversation and who've kind of pushed forward this kind of cancel culture, who have kind of pushed forward stuff that really resemble…”
Lonsdale: Robots will be able to perform any task within two years
“In the next couple years, robots are going to be able to do everything.”
Lonsdale: AI-native startups will crush incumbents by redesigning workflows from scratch
“It's so hard to like re-engineer how some of these things work based on what's possible today. That they're just going to get crushed by new companies started by younger people who are like, maybe not even younger necessarily, but people who are just doing thi…”
Lonsdale: Russia funded European green parties to halt fracking and eliminate competition
“They funded the green parties, they funded the protests, and they turned off fracking in Europe because it's so good for the environment. They tricked everyone because obviously they don't want competition.”
Lonsdale: OpenAI Keeps Failing in Attempts to Capture the Enterprise Market
“I think they're bad at enterprise. I think they don't have the, I think they keep trying and they're not succeeding. Maybe they'll get it though. I don't know.”
Lonsdale: Explicitly illiberal ideologues should not run university departments
“I feel like if someone is clearly illiberal, if they're clearly an Islamist who's trying to conquer for Islam, if they're clearly a communist who's trying to You know, conquer with communism and push that, like, they probably shouldn't be running our departmen…”
Lonsdale claims Biden's HUD forced facilities to allow drug use
“For a while, HUD, the national government was actually coming in under the Biden administration, and it was forcing people to allow people to use drugs in their treatment areas”
Lonsdale: Zuckerberg Built an 'Anti-Woke' School After Facebook's Became Far-Left
“He and a bunch of my friends have a school that's, like, sort of anti, anti-woke, because the school of Facebook was super woke, and so they all had to, like, build something else.”
Lonsdale: Zuckerberg Talks Masculinity but Lacks the Courage to Fight Back
“He's not willing to take that swing. And so he's not a guy's guy, you know? And which is a funny cause he's trying to talk about masculinity. But like being a guy's guy means that the people who fucked with you, pardon my French.”
Lonsdale: Competitors are weaponizing Reid Hoffman's politics against Joby
“One fund that put a billion dollars in is my friend. Michael Thompson, who he, you know, I feel like I'm friends with both sides, but I'm kind of on the moderate right, I'm on the right, and Michael is on the right, and his partner Reid Hoffman's on the left, …”
Lonsdale: Slow FDA review enables China to commercialize US biotech IP first
“We'll start something here that's based on a new breakthrough, a really important new target, and because the FDA is so slow, because it takes you a decade, and China only takes four or five years, they'll literally start something a few years after taking all…”
The other half of the tape: Joe Lonsdale's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 151 times in 49 episodes across the shows. 22 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Shaan Puri 54Jason Calacanis 21Sam Parr 10Harry Stebbings 7Erik Torenberg 7Codie Sanchez 7Chamath Palihapitiya 7Zachary Bookman 6
Statements about Joe Lonsdale, by other people (22)
Sanchez: Fired podcast vendor who refused to work on Joe Lonsdale episode
“So, Joe Lonsdale was gonna come on the show, and we had a vendor that was working on our podcast. They do some, what's called pre-production stuff, like come up with thumbnails or their interesting tidbits on the internet. And this young gentleman reached out,…”
Thiel's lesson: Double down on compounding winners instead of starting anew
“One of the lessons I learned from Peter Thiel is that you should be really, really careful putting effort into new things. Almost always, it's a better idea to put money into your main compounding thing. That's got a lot more room to run. Like there's more are…”
Gallagher: Americans can easily buy dangerous pathogens like HIV online
“You right now, Joe, could go online and buy, you could buy, you could definitely buy AIDS, you could buy MERS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. There's no tripwires in place for the purchase of this stuff,”
McAfee: Employees Seek Status by Becoming Gatekeepers in Approval Loops
“One way you get status inside this thing called the company where you spend so many of your waking hours is to be in the loop. And so subconsciously, almost all the time, we humans, we want to be part of the process. We want to be in the loop. We want to be co…”
Marr: Epirus's Leonidas system acts like a force field for military bases
“We think about Leonidas as it really creates what's like a force field. You can create a force field around a base or defensive area. So I think it really does change the game.”
Ross: AI puts new career entrants on equal footing with industry veterans
“And this is the second time in my career where everyone's sort of kind of getting back to equal footing, and so young people who are just getting into their careers just starting are on equal ground with people like me, people like you who have spent 10, 2030 …”
Meyer: Media attacks on tech figures are no longer working
“Today it's become almost a badge of honor because of how ridiculous the attacks have become. It's not just Marc Andreessen. It's not just you. It's not just Elon. It's not just the people with names. You know, they'll, they'll attack anyone that they think the…”
Cotton: European regulation makes building giant tech companies almost unheard of
“Even compared to some of our European friends, you know, their economies are just very sclerotic. And the prospects for someone like a Joe Lonsdale, or as we mentioned earlier, Mark Zuckerberg to rise from nowhere and create a giant company out of nothing is a…”
Puri: Joe Lonsdale has founded more billion-dollar companies than anyone in America
“It was Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire who started more billion dollar companies than anyone else in America.”
Carter invested blindly in ContextLogic and missed the Wish pivot
“And you said you were gonna invest, and you said Troy, you should put some money in. And, you know, I honestly, I had no idea what Peter was talking about. Like, I had, you know, a little inkling, but you trusted him so much, and I trusted you so much, I'm lik…”
Koch: Public attacks on our philanthropic network actually attract supporters
“These attacks in many ways help us, because they call attention to what we're doing. So people are interested in finding out, and when they find out they find that what we're doing is the opposite of what we're attacked for. And so it attracts more people to w…”
Tan turned down being Palantir's first engineer due to media sentiment
“Why did I turn down being first engineer at Palantir? I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out, and it actually came out of this thinking, because this is why I'm very, very careful about it, that when I was 23 and I got an offer from one of the best in…”
Lonsdale and Karp banned Ghamsari's Aston Martin from Palantir office
“You and Carp made me not bring it to the office. Cause you thought it didn't reflect well on the culture of Palantir.”
Puri: Billionaires have invested $200M into University of Austin
“Billionaires have put two hundred million into funding that”
Sanchez: In talks with UT and UATX for educational program
“I'm in talks right now with University of Texas and University of Austin, which is Joe Lonsdale's, ah, company, to do a program with them where we can push back on what I think is awful education that's taught at most institutions.”
McGrew: Vision models have specific neurons that activate for individual people
“Yeah, and at some point, there's a Joe Lonsdale neuron that, you know, is out there, you know, and individual people, you can actually find these neurons in the networks.”
Jones: The United States has made undeniable civil rights progress
“And I could walk out and I could go jump in the car and I can go wherever I want. Right? So yes, we've made progress.”
Hoffman: Interactive AI twin withheld from public over hacker abuse risks
“So I haven't put it out in the wild for this exact reason, because there's a whole group of hackers who they wouldn't care if it was Joe or Reed or anything else. They just wanted to say, Crazy stuff.”
Langone Evaluates Job Candidates by Observing How They Treat Restaurant Waitstaff
“To this day, Joe, one of the things I love to do if I'm being asked to evaluate somebody for a job at one of the companies, I like to take them to a meal. I love to watch how they interact with a waiter or the busboy.”
Luckey: I maintain a list of forgotten technologies ripe for comeback
“I mean, I have a whole list on my computer of things that are this, basically forgotten technology. Things that didn't work in the past, and that are right for a comeback.”
Joe Lonsdale's 8VC Was 2016's Largest First-Time VC Fund at $400M+
“I mean, the largest fund that was raised this year was Eight Partners, which is Joe Lonsdale's new fund, and obviously he's an experienced investor. They raised for over four hundred million.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
My First Million 66
All-In 31
20VC 30
the a16z Podcast 15
BigDeal 6
Capital Allocators 2
the MAD Podcast 1
2026 3 mentions in 1 episode
2025 36 mentions in 15 episodes 2 per episode
- The Unicorn Founder Who Delegated Everything.
- The Crazy Story of Google’s 7 Angel investors
- What’s truly going on inside DOGE?
- Business as a sport, Surge AI, and Waymo vs. Robotaxi
- Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 7 Wild Business Ideas for this $3 Trillion Dollar Frontier
- All-In Inauguration Day Livestream with the Besties from Washington, DC!
- Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 69 mentions in 13 episodes 5 per episode
- I Spent 7 Days With The Richest Men In Texas
- Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Zachary Bookman: Why Valuations and Fundraising are BS | E1235 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 10 Startups w/ Stock Grants That’ll Make You A Millionaire | Sara’s List 2024
- The AI App Doing $6M With 1 Employee
- Fixing Higher Education & New Startup Opportunities
- Follow These 10 Steps to Completely Change Your Life in 2025 | BigDeal Wrapped
- The 2024 Milly Awards
- 5 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 9 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- E76.5: Food shortage, China's grand plan, inflation, French election plus an All-In Summit preview
- E72: Impact of sanctions, deglobalization, food shortage risks, macroeconomic outlook and more
- E90: Twitter subpoenas, market overview, Pelosi's Taiwan visit & more
- #AIS: Palmer Luckey on Anduril
- E77: Tech work culture, crypto regulation, stablecoins, $NFLX & more w/ Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong
- E73: Late-stage VC markdowns and mistakes, market strategy, Ukraine/Russia update with Brad Gerstner
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 19 mentions in 3 episodes 6 per episode
- E53: Wealth tax, inflation as a capital allocator, big tech earnings, paternity leave & more
- 3 Patterns for Great Business Ideas with Jack Abraham, Founder, Managing Partner & CEO at Atomic
- E25: Biden's vaccine mandate, "equity" in distribution, NFT speculation, impact of inflation & more
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 3 mentions in 1 episode
2018 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Why Founders Must Use VCs as a Barometer, How to Make Distributed Teams Work Successfully & The Biggest Mistake People Make Early In Their Career with Dylan Serota, Founder @ Terminal
- 20VC: The Core Lessons From Building a 150 Startup Angel Portfolio, Why Founders Who Angel Invest Have Such Strong Advantages and Why The Lean Startup Makes Less and Less Sense Today with Adrian Aoun, Founder & CEO @ Forward
- 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
- 20VC: More $ Raised This Year Than The Past 15, War Chests Being Built & Decline In First Time Funds: So What The Heck Is Happening In Venture with Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
2015 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Joe's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 AMERICAN OPTIMISTLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VChost | 161 | 357 | 55% 57/103 | full record on American Optimist → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 2 | 64 | 78% 7/9 | full record on 20VC → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 3 | 29 | 33% 3/9 | full record on All-In → |
| BIGDEALLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 2 | 26 | 33% 1/3 | full record on BigDeal → |
| MADLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 1 | 20 | 25% 1/4 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 1 | 17 | 100% 1/1 | full record on My First Million → |
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 1 | 16 | 50% 1/2 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
| a16zLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC | 1 | 0 | — | full record on the a16z Podcast → |